ProNautic Custom Yacht
Interiors of Sydney, British Columbia, was the last major player Edson
tapped for the project. It was ProNautic’s job to produce the joinery
that would transform Marshall’s drawings—electronic and otherwise—into
a real yacht interior. Edson took no chances on outcomes, however. Well
before permanently installing furniture and bulkheads, he dictated that
everything be mocked up at full-scale in plywood and assembled onboard.

The approach produced
a dramatic save just before work began on the master stateroom. Although
the layout looked fine on the computer, the mockup revealed there wasn’t
enough space for it. The fix was drastic and expensive. The firewall separating
the master from the engine room—an already fully bonded ten-inch-thick
structural bulkhead comprised of multiple layers of sound- and vibration-attenuating
loaded-vinyl foam, vacuum-bagged, glass-sandwiched Corecell, and swathes
of pricey 3M Thinsulate—had to be cut out and shifted aft some 18
inches. “A major frustration,” Edson told me, “because
it meant other stuff had to change, like engine placement, balance, much
of the naval architecture, really.”

Motioning proudly, Edson
led me into the whitish glow of the huge tent he’d been contemplating
moments before and heartily introduced me to his lamination crew. The
gesture was nearly as emblematic as the tent itself. If attempting to
lead literally hundreds of employees, experts, and subcontractors toward
a common goal sometimes made Edson just a tad anxious, it was pretty obvious
the joy he took from the project more than compensated.

Over a hamburger that
afternoon, Edson waxed poetic about the great things he was doing or going
to do with the 85. Among them were the use of pricey Airex hull coring
to boost damage resistance; the installation of clamshell-type “vectored
cowl” exhaust ports on the hull bottom to divert exhaust laterally
and nix backpressure problems, station-wagon effect, and vibration; and
the incorporation of sound- and vibration-attenuating products and techniques
that he hoped would make the 85 one of the quietest yachts afloat.

Some time later I sea
trialed the prototype (“Dream Machine,” February 2005) and I’m
here to tell ya, Edson made good on everything he said. And the performance
of the $4.7-million boat that cost him approximately $7 million to design,
tool, and build? Even with 30 employees onboard working on her final completion
and a literal ton of tools, the 85 still ran like a scared, 31.4-mph rabbit.